Goodreads Raises Angel Round To Help You Find That Perfect Book

650,000 registered users in the second year of funding is not bad. I wish Otis much success.

http://www.whatshottoday.com

How the heck does a site like this get 650,000 users in less than a year? I mean, the site actually looks pretty good, but it can’t possibly be that viral. Are they spamming people’s address books?

(Note - I’m not accusing them of this at all, and have no evidence they are spamming. I’ve just seen Shelfari do this and am wondering if anyone knows if these guys are doing the same to drive up numbers)

In answer to 2, I believe goodreads has a Facebook app which may (or may not) be largely responsible for their large number of users.

I have a a similarly themed Facebook app for books, which has pulled in around 50,000 users, with a zero advertising budget and total capital outlay of about $100. 650,000 would definitely be doable if you had even a couple dedicated developers.

http://ubc.facebook.com/apps/a.....2397701323

Garth

650K users in less than a year is by no means impressive, seriously; and by this growth rate, can’t even be called viral, for what viral means these days. After all, bookworms are big communities by themselves.

Nice work, guys… on the bootstrapping to 650k members and near profitability, that is. I’m sure they could turn the income statement profitable if they wanted to, but that would come at the expense of growth, and you don’t do that until you’re at the “cash cow” phase of the lifecycle. Now that their niche is proven and they need growth capital. Many most of the life/death risk milestones have been passed. I don’t know the numbers, but this should be a good investment for the angels. I mean it’s probably not going to be a massive homerun because it is a pretty tight vertical (but not too tight). Keep cranking fellas. Cheers!

YDRIVE: From zero to 650,000 in 365 days with no outside funding? I mean the growth rate is technically not even calculable since the denominator = 0, but it is a huge growth rate, especially on what must be a tiny if non-existent marketing budget. Yes, 650,000 new members in a year is nothing for a big or funded and already-successful site, but it seems impressive for these guys. Note, the niche is not my cup of tea, but good for them on it. Maybe Amazon will buy them. Cheers again.

@chrisco, well, firstly, no-outside-funding factor is upfront discounted (many reasons, let’s not detail here).. it depends on the general meaning of, what’s impressive.. eg., iLike (either of themselves or via facebook) stats are benchmarks of impressive, or those from Slide and RockYou guys… To be sure, it’s nice, and it’s good, and it’s great, it’s delightful,… but not impressive.. particularly if it’s labeled (by MA) as “a social network”.

And it also depends on the overall size of the community in context. 650K users on TC is impressive.. 650K users on a [any] social networking sites are not [really that] impressive.

That said, goodreads.com’s current round of shareholders are [far more] impressive… (as evidenced by TC’s — and in particular, TC MA’s — covering them today.)

As a very happy LT member, I just thought I’d plonk in some additional info on LibraryThing which focuses on powerful, book data heavily - and isn’t just a clone running of Amazon’s data:

- you can search and add to your catalogue from over 175 world-wide sources (from Amazon, to the Library of Congress, to the National Library of New Zealand)

- over 21 million books catalogued; 27 million tags applied; over 300,000 reviews; over 659,000 user-uploaded book covers (got the Lithuanian edition of Harry Potter?); over 16,000 user-uploaded author pictures (which often involves users requesting author/publisher permission personally).

Goodread seems to be quit similar to Douban. I’m studying the recommend system. Douban’s system is very simple. I ‘ll check Goodread later. I think the most crazy recommend system is http://www.hotopeople.com. Everything can be rated and recommend.

YDRIVE: RE: “And it also depends on the overall size of the community in context. 650K users on TC is impressive.. 650K users on a [any] social networking sites are not [really that] impressive.”

Exactly my point. I said “650,000 new members in a year is nothing for a big or funded and already-successful site.”

GR is coming off a base of zero one year ago. That is an large % growth rate.

Every site must start at zero. I don’t have stats on how long it took various sites to pass 650,000 users, although that would be interesting to see, especially if it broke out “funded” vs. “unfunded” in the chart.

Again, a site like this is not my cup of tea and I am not defending them or fluffing them, simply stating that I think they did a good job to start from zero and bootstrap to 650,000 memebers in one year, then close on a brand-name angel round for what must be the purpose of accelerating the growth rate, after proving the concept, etc.

Cheers again. Have a good Monday everyone!

Certainly.. they’ve done a good job.. let’s “agree” at that

Agreed

Amazon might have an eye on this.

That’s very impressive!

Nhick
http://www.itrush.com

Near profitability? I didn’t log in, but I don’t see any ads anywhere? How are they generating money?? I know they haven’t put up any money…but still.

Anyone knows how they make money currently to be near-profitability?

Neat idea but the first thing I thought was how easy it would be for Amazon to replicate it? It already has a similar rating system for books, for people to post comments etc… I’m curious what the barrier to entry is for this startup! Congrats none the less.

I’m sorry, but 650k registered and only 100k monthly uniques. This is a dreadful ratio.

@Everett - have you ever wondered how easy it was for Barnes and Noble to replicate what Amazon was doing in 1996? Oh - wait - they did replicate it - only it didn’t really go anywhere. That’s one of the biggest reasons why startups even exist - because big corps just can’t do it and even when they do it, they do it wrong 95% of the time.

It’s funny because yesterday I was looking for a book that I wanted for Christmas, and I stumbled upon GoodReads for the first time. Somehow I managed to spend an hour’s time on the site - and I’m not even a bookworm. And today I’m reading a TechCrunch article on it.

I think GoodRead has a lot of future potential.

@ #19- Good point Rob.

@ #20- where did you stumble upon it? Facebook?

This whole conversation line has made GoodReads very intriguing, and now they have reached me, thru you! Advertising is a funny thing!! I am going to have to check out this site as I have been searching for a book that is out of print. Can you download books electronically to your IPod or better yet, your Amazon Kindle? I am sure Amazon is going to want a taste of this somehow.

Re: Amazon having their eye on GoodReads… they already invest $1 million into Shelfari in may of this year.

I am a passionate goodreads user.
As an answer to the question further up - no spamming is happening here, and that’s possibly why people like it.
There are discussion boards, featured authors and lots more and once you start looking around, it’s tough to leave again.
Precondition to like the site though: you have to like books!

I really like the fact that they let you export your book list. They understand that my data is my data. I know that the time I spend on the site will not be wasted by being locked into their system so they can make money off of me.

Someone needs to explain to me how they’re generating money and or got 650,000 users. Seriously, look at their Alexa rating. It’s rather pathetic, and yet they’re doing ‘well’ and ‘growing’ according to TechCrunch? Anyone care to shed some light on this?

Don’t worry MS is watching carefully!
fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com

Why do people take Internet ratings seriously? They’re even more flawed than TV ratings. They measure a completely non-random sample of malware-infested computers. It’s entirely unscientific and ridiculously biased. Worse, it’s biased in unknown ways.

That is an impressive registered user list.

I think “Xinil” should have revealed he runs a semi-competitor, as do I—I’m the LibraryThing guy.

Congrats to Goodreads and Otis. Now that Shelfari’s spamming has brought it a severe traffic reversal—according to Alexa anyway, I look forward to a fair fight with a talented team. That said, the different strengths, models and demographics between LT and GR make it more likely that the really sharp fight is between Shelfari and GoodReads (with Anobii in the mix, maybe).

Quick points:

1. I want to underscore the point above about data portability. LT, S and GR all allow you to export your data. The Facebook aps—Visual Bookshelf—invariably do not. Closed gardens beget closed gardens, I think.
2. I want to cast some doubt—Otis, feel free to tell me I’m wrong—on the idea that GR has 10,000,000 books reviewed (above). That’s counting a rating as a review—something the site does too. It’s semantic, but I think most people will think they actually have ten million *reviews*. That would be Amazon-size numbers.

Hey All,

Thanks for all the interest in Goodreads! I’ll do my best to address some of the questions:

- No we don’t spam, although there was indeed a recent blowup about our competitor Shelfari - we blogged our position on the Goodreads blog. We are also looking forward to competing fairly, now that its mostly blown over.
- Facebook has been lots of fun, but we’re more focused on Goodreads.com. Facebook accounts for less than 5% of our members.
- In response to people wondering how we did it, I think our success so far has to do with 2 factors: the first one is that we’ve built successful web products before. The other is that Goodreads is built around a very compelling subject, that is near and dear to the hearts of many people. We’ve gotten many people who’ve signed up and said “I’d never be caught dead on MySpace/FB/etc, but I love books so much I couldn’t resist this!” How many social networks can you really invite your mother to?
- Tim’s clarification is right - we’ve had 10 million books added, as opposed to reviewed. Although the bulk of those do have ratings.

happy holidays!

Otis

Congrats Otis. Keep plugging away!